Friday, October 13, 2006

Recently I've been working my way through the Sonic Mega Collection Plus, a bunch of old Sega games ported to the Xbox. Other than an occasional foray into the original Sonic the Hedgehog, I never played any of the compiled games as I never owned a Sega console of any sort. Playing all the way through the original Sonic was fun, and the Tetris-like Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is positively addictive. Bean Machine reminds me a lot of Dr. Mario, which I played so much back in the day that at one point I had to quit cold turkey. I was waking up in the middle of the night having played the game in my dreams.

Having polished off Sonic the Hedgehog, I immediately started working on the sequel. Unfortunately, Sonic 2: Electric Boogaloo introduces this new character, Tails the Two-Tailed Fox. And the little bastard follows you around throughout the entire game. It's driving me nuts. Imagine your kid sister (Hi, Jen!) following you around all the time, doing nothing but distracting you from the task at hand. "Cripes, kid! Could you go do something else? I'm trying to dodge robot-monsters and collect rings over here. You're cramping my style." What genius decided that being followed around by this Tails character would somehow enhance the playing experience?

"Man, is there anything Jeff CAN'T do when it comes to gaming? This guy is like a critical 20 every roll. Jeff can bite the heads offa five game geeks, including their sorry-ass DM, and spit 'em into a large duffel bag ONE AT A TIME!...that's just the kind of messed up bastard he is! You think yer a gamer, punk? Well..do ya? Jeff will depants your weasel-ass right in front of your grandma."